Anchor
Bob and Sheila
made a small sprit with roller for the anchor aft . This has worked out
well and they deploy all Loose Moose 2's ground
tackle from the well.
Leyenda
uses an 35 lbs CQR with 15m 5/16" chain and 100m 1/2"
Nylon cable.
Ballast
Mat
laid 600 lbs lead + 110 lbs cement
(vol.est.@96lbs/cu.ft.) each side
in ballast boxes. A further 50 lbs lead each side was laid in the bilge
under sole abaft bulkhead E to help trim her level only slightly down
by head.
Dan
writes: The hull underneath the ballast should be through bolted to
every frame member surrounding the ballast and the ballast should be
supported by rods or bolts through the frames. The corners where the
bottom meets the bilge board cases should be heavily fiber
glassed.
Dave
and Anke screw copper sheets to the bottom of their Luna
and that way solve the anti fouling problem too. They use bronze screws
to avoid electrolysis. Today (2006) they say that water probably
penerated through the tar sealed holes into the bottom planking, as the
boat had become quite heavy by the time.
Bilge
boards
If
you opt for all wooden boards instead of the alloy core, be sure to put
a metal sleeve inside the boards so that the pin is not bearing on wood.
Bright
work
Tim did send an e-mail from Australia:
One
word from my own current bitter experience: ensure the interior
surfaces of panels, stringers, beams etc. are all smooth finished (i.e.
final sanded ready for painting or varnishing) before actually fitting
them; also make =sure= you rapidly clean up glue runs and so on. It's
impossible (and a danger to health) to clean up properly once the boat
is all together, as I've just found. I've given up trying to get a
yacht-like interior to Lady Kate, we're now just going to paint with
latex paint. The detail of finish (from professional builders no less)
is so bad that we can't use gloss paint because it will show all the
mess. Problem is that the interior is intricate once fully together and
sanding all the mooks and crannies just can't be done (well, it can be,
but only at a horrendous time cost)
Copperpoxy
Applying
is in 2 stages: first layer with a foam roller. That results in an
surface like coarse sandpaper. Object here is to establish film
thickness. Second layer with a squeegee to fill the valleys between the
peaks. The need to sand depends on your squeegee skills. Stirring of
the material by hand can be a bit of a hassle especially at a low
temperature, but warming on my wood stove did help.
Lady
Kate was
finished below the waterline in copperpoxy (local equivalent, different
trade name), bilge boards too. It's still working well after 5 years
BUT Lady Kate lives in fresh water.
Have
in mind, you can't clean a flat bottom easily at low tide. A friend of
mine (scuba diver) offered to clean Twilight's
bottom once a year...
Fiberglass
AS29
Bruce
made a table covered with Formica and laid up the bottom and sides out
of four layers of biaxial cloth and vinyl ester resin. The
bottom was
than placed in a particle board cradle, plywood bulkheads were bonded
to it and the sides bonded to the bottom and bulkheads. The top is from
a mold for a Mirage 34, the cockpit from a 24' racing boat. The stern
is stepped to facilitate getting out of the water and the bow is
brought to a point. Bruce used an offset centerboard in place of the
bilge boards, this in addition to moving the forward berths forward
gave him room for a shower with standing headroom on the starboard side.
Insulation
Discussing
with Dave a sandwiched deck with a foam core or vertical plywood
stripes as mentioned by the Gougeon Brothers he answered:
I'd
thought more along the lines of a standard Bolger deck (longitudinal
deck stringers supporting the ply deck), but with a second, lighter
deck screwed into the stringers from the underside, with panels of foam
loose (not glued, that is) and held in place between the true deck and
false one. This wouldn't be nearly as strong as the Gougeon system, but
easier to build, stronger than designed, and everything could be
dissassembled, cleaned and inspected. Unfortunately, I thunk of it too
late for LUNA.
Kevils
The kevils are too short for two thick dock lines. Make
them at least two inches longer on the outside, says Dan.
Limber
holes
If
one would build bulkhead G to plan the condensation water would drain
right into the double bunk... I asked Tim how the problem is solved at
his boat. His answer:
The limber hole isn't there. In fact
...none of the limberholes shown in bulkheads on the plans are present
on Lady Kate. This is a design modification I approve of! - apart from
preventing wet bedding, you want the ability to watertight-seal
compartments if voyaging. The limber hole in bulkhead G particularly
needs to be stopped up- think in terms of a following wave filling the
mizzen/engine void and entering through the dorade vent: better to have
the flow in your drawers rather than right through the boat....
Noise
Tim writes:
Anchor:
very noisy. Solution is to go to the other side of the
channel/island/harbour where there aren't waves. Berthed/anchored, with
ripples: the stern is quite noisy too from the slap-slap of wavelets
and ripples. Deborah and I quite like the noise, which is natural,
soothing and masks other noises.
The
bow sometimes slams, sending a shudder throughout the hull,
especially when fishing trawlers motor past at night
says Mat. In heavy chop and strong winds he reduces the noise by tying
a spring warp to the anchor chain/ rope shackle and allowing the boat
to lie broadside to the wind on a bridle setup by cleating off the
spring to the mizzen cleat. (motion is a bit jerky...)
A solution in
lesser winds and chop is to inflate a cheap rubberized nylon surf mat
(5' x 2'6"). The trick is to inflate to only about 2/3 pressure and tie
it back aft and underwater a bit to overlap the water/hull bottom
interface. Mat uses 2 lines tied back to the spinnaker sheet blocks.
Plywood
I
use mostly birch plywood from Finland well coated with epoxy, on deck
the lighter Bruynzeel's Okumé and some inexpensive Lauan ply
in minor
interior places.
As Bernie Wolfart suggested some years ago we
tested our Finply by making a cutting board for the kitchen from a
piece of scrap and placed it into the dishwasher every couple of days.
You´ll have to replace your old plastic cutting board
anyway... needed for rudder bearings!
Ports
For strength, the port lights on the hull should be on
the outside.
Post
in the main saloon
Needed to support the deck, says Dan. Handy to support
a table and give hand holds.
Tim
wrote: We
cut out the post in the main saloon of Lady Kate once we had built the
the galley back to plan, including the dresser. The dresser and
associated bulkhead were important structural members. The fore deck is
slightly springy, but what I think we'll end up doing is putting in a
laminated crossbeam rather than reverting to a post. Mind you, if we
were Southern Oceaning, I'd probably have two posts in the main saloon!
Rub
Rails
Because
the sides are vertical, make rub rails bigger and make one lower to
protect against projections on pilings near the waterline. (Dan)
Rudder
The rudder post of Lady Kate is
run through plastic bearings made out of ordinary vegetable chopping
boards (white, very slippery) gives a self lubricating bearing.
Side
panels (lower)
Dave writes: ... we punched a hole in our
Long Micro at the waterline (in
order to save 3 miles they took a shortcut and had an unpleasant
encounter with a short branch spike of a log in front of a bank of
sand...), and decided to run a second layer of plywood along
the
hull to a point about 5cm above where bottom meets transoms.
This
doubles the hull thickness to about 20cm above the waterline
Additionally, we used it in the big boat (Luna) at construction time as
the horizontal butt block between upper and lower side panels, and it
worked great!
Timber
In
order to contribute to save the rain forests I opted for local species:
mostly larch, black locust for bottom frames, bow and transom, ash for
interior framing in few places where hardwood seems appropriate.
Water
Tanks
Dan has two flexible bladder tanks 26 gallons each, in
the place shown for the middle drawers under the main saloon settees.
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